Crucible

by Nancy Kress

  Alex watched the shuttle dot shudder and suddenly plummet toward Greentrees.

  The smeary dot moved faster and faster, the alien ship in orbit began to accelerate, and then—how fast!—the Beta Vine slammed into the orbiting ship.

  Both dots disappeared from the screen.

  The shuttle dot hit the ground.

  “Enemy shuttle crashed at fourteen six by a hundred eight three, sir,” said Julian’s tech. “Enemy vessel destroyed by a direct hit. Beta Vine destroyed on suicide mission.”

  “Continue monitoring,” Julian’s voice said.

  Alex stared in disbelief.

  Ben said, “He… he… Julian… sacrificed the Beta Vine! And we don’t even know who was on it or the shuttle! The bastard killed them all!”

  Suddenly Ben stood up so fast that his chair toppled over. He swung around, fury on his face, and Alex turned with him. Captain Lewis stood with his feet braced slightiy apart, a gun leveled at the tech’s chest.

  “Corporal Stoller,” the bodyguard said, “you will refer to the commander of this army in respectful terms. And you will calm down.”

  The two men stared at each other. Alex stepped forward. “Stop it, both of you. Now.”

  Ben looked at her; the Terran did not. After a moment the young tech walked past them both, toward the door.

  “Remain inside, Corporal. That’s an order. Commander Martin will decide who to comlink about his military decisions, and when to take that action. You, too, ma’am.”

  Alex demanded, “Am I a prisoner?”

  “No, ma’am. But you will remain inside until further word from the commander Martin.”

  Alex turned away and spoke on the secure channel. The soldier made no effort to stop her. Ben, after a moment of clench-fisted indecision, picked up his chair and resumed his place at his console.

  “Julian,” Alex said, “you just blew up the Beta Vine, the alien ship, and the shuttle. Why?”

  “What happened?” came Ashraf’s voice.

  “Why?” Alex yelled.

  Julian’s voice was quieter than ever. “Alex is correct, Ashraf. I put out an EMP on the shuttle while it was still in range of the Mira equipment. And I sent the Beta Vine on a suicide mission into the enemy ship. At full acceleration, it outran the so-called ’glitter beam’ as well as the more conventional weapons. I did it to keep Greentrees safe.”

  Alex cried, “But you don’t even know if it was Furs or Vines aboard!”

  “I couldn’t take a chance. My job is to protect Greentrees.”

  “You may have killed a shipful of innocent beings! A species that’s been our ally!”

  “I take full responsibility for the decision.”

  Ashraf said, “Who was aboard the Beta Vine?

  “Only a pilot, who was a volunteer. Everyone else had already been removed. The pilot, a Terran named Lt. Suriah Poliakis, is now a military hero.”

  A Terran, not a Greenie.

  Did it matter?

  No.

  Julian said, “The explosion may have been visible to anyone on Greentrees monitoring the alien vessel, including all our scientists. I’m going to make a general announcement now of what has happened. I will not be available on this channel. Alex, you can tell everyone to return to Mira City.

  “The city is now safe.”

  He was a hero; he was a villain.

  The city council met in the Mausoleum. It wasn’t actually a meeting as much as a chaotic, two-day shouting match. Councilors barreled into the Mausoleum as

  A council member said, “It’s Commander Martin we have to thank for putting down that mob from Hope of Heaven. They could have burned the whole city down! We’d have lost our homes, our businesses, everything.”

  Someone else, someone in the back, said slowly, “But the price I— is this: Commander Martin is in sole charge of Mira City.”

  “I am not,” Julian said instantly. “And if the council votes for to resign my position as your defense leader, I will do so immediately.”

  There was a long silence. Then Ashraf Shanti said, “I think we owe Julian Martin our lives.”

  More silence, but its quality had changed. Alex saw that the usually diffident mayor’s words carried surprising weight, especially among the Arab businessmen who would now be able to resume normal commerce in the city. The tenor of the meeting had subtly change

  It stayed changed. The criticisms and objections continued, the forces behind Julian grew hourly. He had won again.

  And Alex herself? I trust him, she thought, but at the same time she couldn’t help thinking about the aliens—Furs or Vines?— that died, as well as the young dissidents from Hope of Heaven. Was that what war did, mix up the good and the bad so that no matter how hard you thought about it, they couldn’t be separated?

  “So fair and foul a day I have not seen. ” Alex was surprised how the words of Duncan’s play lingered in her mind. When she told Duncan this, he merely rolled his eyes, and said, “My dear lady, do not embarrass yourself by announcing your ignorance of bard’s timelessness. At least keep it decently to yourself.”

  Julian himself remained unperturbed even after the two-days’ “meeting” officially ended. “Talk abates over time,” he said. He permitted MiraNet to resume operations.

  Everything else was resumed as well, mining and research farming and the hundred other entities clamoring for a greater allocation of resources. Alex worked long days. Nights she spent with Julian. They were as sexually hungry with each other as ever, and sometimes as she wrapped her arms around his hard, muscled body just before she fell asleep, she thought: This is happiness. But at the same time, there was a faint remoteness about him that had not been there before. He always waited for her to sleep before he left her, needing almost no sleep himself. He went back to his office and worked, he told her. She woke alone.

  A memorial service was held for Mary Pesci, Mesbah Shanab, Suriah Poliakis. All of Mira, it seemed, turned out for the ceremony. Ashraf spoke, calling the three “our first martyrs,” and Alex watched Jake’s old eyes widen with shock.

  “They don’t remember Erik Halberg. Or even Beta Vine!” he said to Alex.

  “We don’t seem to be too good at remembering,” she said wryly, and only later realized that she and Jake had used different pronouns.

  Alex drove out one day, without Julian, to look at Hope of Heaven. The dissident settlement remained mostly deserted. A few figures, spied in the distance, went indoors as soon as they saw her. Weeds grew in the bright flower beds. The burned buildings hadn’t been touched, piles of charred timber fallen in on themselves. Debris, probably left by looters, blew in the street.

  Where had they gone, those passionate and misguided young people who had caused so much pain? Pushing steadily north into the wilderness. No one had received any comlinks from them, or at least no one whom Alex knew. It was such a huge, untouched world. Had the rebels joined again with Wong Yat-Shing? Were they creating somewhere the justice they felt Mira City had denied them?

  When Julian discovered she’d traveled alone and unguarded to Hope of Heaven, he was as angry as she’d ever seen him. “Even one rebel left could have killed you for the pure satisfaction of it. You were not even armed.”

  “I_”

  “I’m restoring your bodyguard,” he said coldly, and she hadn’t argued. His anger was proof that he cared about her life. She didn’t really believe she was in danger, but she treasured his caring. Alex reached out and put a warm hand on his shoulder. He was so much to her, and so much in himself: brilliant and experienced and hardworking on Mira City’s behalf. And he had chosen her out of all the women he could have had, which was most of them outside of the medina.

  Impulsively she moved into his arms and kissed his warm, responsive mouth.

  Mira was lucky to have him. Alex was lucky to have him. And he was right, the negative talk was dying down.

  Everything was going to be all right.

  18

  THE AVERY MOUNTA
INS

  After what Karim judged to have been a few days, his and Lucy’s hunger abated. They watched with fascination as Greentrees rose leisurely to meet their bubble. The continents and seas became distinct. Then, near the end of the descent, one continent moved below them, covered with mountains and purplish vegetation. The Vegetation became trees, the mountains individual low peaks and upland purple meadows. Bright masses appeared and became flowers. Thin silvery strands resolved themselves into rushing mountain streams. The mountains were above them instead of below, and then the trees were above them, and then they were down, touching the ground as lightly as a breeze.

  Karim blinked back wetness in his eyes. The membrane collapsed around them, falling to the ground like a popped balloon. Karim stepped free of the slime and breathed deeply.

  “I’d… I’d forgotten how sweet Greentrees always smells,” he managed to get out. “Oh, Lucy…”

  “I know,” she whispered. And then, visibly pulling herself together, “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know. I think the best thing to do is walk downhill as much as possible and hope we come to the river. If the bubble did leave us anywhere near Mira, that’s our best chance of locating it.”

  “What about the bubble?”

  Karim looked at the tough slimy “fabric” lying quiet on the purple groundcover. “I don’t know. I guess it will do whatever it’s supposed to.”

  What it did was follow them. When they stopped to drink from small stream, cupping their hands to hold the cool water, Lucy noticed the slime oozing through the rough plants. “Karim… I think it’s trying to find out what the situation is on Greentrees. Whether there are humans still here, or Vines, or Furs, or what. It’s gather intelhgence.”

  “Let it.”

  She actually smiled. “As if we could stop it.”

  A few minutes later she said suddenly, “Karim, stop.”

  “Do you need to—”

  “No, of course not, I haven’t eaten anything. And I’m hungry. Those are wild sunberries. They’re edible for us, if you don’t mind some diarrhea.”

  The second Lucy said “hungry,” Karim was ravenous. They pulled off handfuls of the big purple berries and crammed them into their mouths. Then Lucy insisted on finding leaves large enough to wrap around their genitals.

  “Lucy, it’s late afternoon. We have to find either people or a shelter of some sort by nightfall.” Greentrees had predators, some of them very dangerous. The decades Karim and Lucy had be gone wouldn’t have changed that.

  “I’m not going into a group of strange people stark naked.”

  He gave in. She was quick and efficient at fashioning rude coverings for them both. The leaves lent no warmth, but they wouldn’t need it until nightfall. With almost no axial tilt, Greentrees was near tropical everywhere.

  And so beautiful. He hadn’t remembered just how beautiful. Not paradise itself could surpass this.

  “Lucy, come on!”

  “I’m coming… oh God, Karim, the berries.”

  He had it, too, in a sudden gut-churning attack. Hastily they retired behind separate bushes. When the diarrhea had passed, Karim felt considerably worse: weak and light-headed.

  A beautiful planet, but he had grown up in civilization. “Karim,” Lucy said shakily, “l-look!”

  She stood at the edge of a downward slope. Karim walked to her. Below lay the river, shining in the late afternoon sun, and beside it inflatables and scattered large equipment. Three tall metal poles stuck up from the ground, with lines running from their tops to a nearby inflatable.

  “A research station!” Karim said. “Just in time, we—”

  The warriors jumped out of the bushes.

  For a shocked moment Karim couldn’t take in what he was seeing. He had images in his brain of scientists: Threadmores, data displays, dried rations, comlinks. In front of him stood three men carrying bows and spears. They wore animal pelts trimmed with feathers and small stones. On their cheeks were tattooed moons, stars, and other small totems. Their long hair was braided: one dark and two reddish blond. Two of the spears pointed straight at Lucy and Karim.

  Lucy said dryly, with the odd self-possession that could come over her in crisis, “So you Cheyenne are still on Greentrees. I’m Lucy Lasky and this is Karim Mahjoub. Have you ever heard of us?”

  The dark-haired brave said, “No. Come with us.”

  Karim said, “What is your name?”

  “You don’t need to know it.”

  The other two motioned downhill with their spears, and Karim nd Lucy started walking toward the research camp. Karim said, “We have just landed from space. There’s a Vine ship in orbit around Greentrees.”

  No answer. Karim glanced over his shoulder, but the slime was invisible. It had sunk into the groundcover, or just had not followed.

  He tried again. “I was with the original landers. I knew Larry Smith, your founder.”

  Nothing. Karim had a sudden queasy flashback of talking to Vines on their silent planet, with never an answer.

  One more attempt. “I thought Mira Corp had a covenant with the Cheyenne. I thought Mira City was supposed to stay out of your affairs and in return you were supposed to stay on the subcontinent to the south.”

  Then the brave did laugh, a sound so ugly that Karim glanced at him, startled. But the man in animal skins said no more, and they all started down the hill to the research station by the river.

  19

  MIRA CITY

  Siddalee Brown said, “There’s a Cheyenne chief to see you.”

  Alex had been just about to leave the Mausoleum. It was very late, hours past sunset, but she’d had mountains of work to get through. She looked at Siddalee.

  “A Cheyenne chief?”

  “That’s what I said,” Siddalee said, not without satisfaction at Alex’s startled expression, but with evident disapproval of Cheyenne coming to the Mausoleum. “Crazy,” Siddalee called them, and Alex was inclined to agree. Crazy romantics, bent on re-creating, on an alien planet, a nontechnological life that had vanished even from Terra centuries before any of them were born.

  This one wasn’t old enough to have come with the First Landing. About Alex’s age, he wore hides trimmed with embroidery and small stones, painstakingly sewn into elaborate designs. The hours of work! His light brown braids hung over his shoulders, bound with cord. He carried a spear, and Alex could just imagine the reaction he had stirred walking the streets of Mira. Alone? Probably not. This was the envoy; his bodyguards waited outside.

  Her own bodyguard moved from just outside her door, where he spent his days, to a position inside the room with his back to the wall and his eyes on the visitor. He was unobtrusive, but he was always there. Alex had argued with Julian about him, but she hadn’t expected to win, and she hadn’t.

  “Welcome to Mira City. I am Alex Cutler, Technology Resource Allocation Officer.”

  “I know. I am Star Rising. I was here for the fiftieth annivers of the First Landing.”

  And she hadn’t recognized him. Alex reddened, even as a rogue part of her mind noted detachedly that this self-willed primitive had the same first name as Star Chu, ambitious young technophile.

  “I am here,” Star Rising said, “on behalf of the Cheyenne Council of Tribes. We protest the attacks by what you call ’wild Furs.’

  Alex couldn’t remember the Cheyenne political structure—they had so little contact with Mira—but she had a vague idea that the Council of Tribes was some sort of overseer for many individual tribes and thus a very big deal. But Cheyenne and wild Furs had been skirmishing with each other, both sides armed with lances and bows, for decades now. Alex was bewildered. “Mayor Ashraf—”

  “Is not in Mira City. So I come to you.”

  No putting this off on Ashraf. The chief had dignity, Alex would give him that: in his tone, his carriage. She said as respectfully as she could, “Mira City has no jurisdiction over your subcontinent, as of course you know. And we have no jurisdiction o
ver the wild Furs. They were here on Greentrees before either your people or mine.”

  “Yes. But until now, they have not had Mira Corp weapons to use against us.”

  Alex stared at him.

  “Yes. My people have been killed by Furs carrying these.”

  From a fold of his tunic he pulled a gun that Alex recognized at once. It was the sort now carried by Mira City’s much expanded security, and it was not hard to put together from objects also made for other uses: small laser, various metal fittings. Only one place in Mira manufactured them and the numbers were strictly controlled.

  She said, stupidly, “How did the Furs get them? Do you know?”

  “No. Although of course someone in Mira must have given them. We assume it was Nan Frayne.”

  “She doesn’t have access to them.”

  “Fifteen Cheyenne have been killed with these guns since the Great Wheel rose in the east. Many Furs have them, which means more Cheyenne will die. Ms. Cutler, my people are not violent. The essence of our lives is contemplative, appreciation of the gifts of the Great Spirit. But I promise you that we will not have on Greentrees repeat of the Sand Creek massacre. No matter what it requires to defend ourselves.”

  Alex had never heard of Sand Creek, but she recognized a threat when she heard one. “Chief Star Rising, I promise to investigate this, starting with the manufacturer. Where can I reach you when I know something?”

  “I travel back to the Council of Tribes. Find me on the journey.” He left, walking more silently than she would have thought possible.

  Alex sat behind her desk and thought. Yat-Shing Wong was still, presumably, alive. He and his dissidents had been spirited away from Julian’s guard by Furs, the Furs who had left spears in two of Julian’s soldiers. So perhaps Wong was supplying the Furs with arms.

  The manager of the gun manufactury, which was owned by Mira Corps, was Chinese.

  But the man, Michael Lin, had been solidly cooperative with Mira City in arming Julian’s troops, in the evacuation, in everything she could think of. Alex trusted him. Lin had never said so outright—most Chinese did not—but she was sure he’d been opposed to what the dissidents had done.